Temari looked between her and the carnage behind her with wide eyes before they fell on Sakura's drawn kunai. She wasn't exactly pointing it at Temari but it was enough to send a message. If Suna was really attacking her team, Sakura would have no choice but to fight Temari.

"Calm down!" She raised her hands. "This attack didn't come from the Kazekage. I don't know what's going on but if they are Suna nin then you can be sure they hold the status of missing nin now."

Sakura continued looking at her, analyzing every aspect of the older girl. She saw how her hands were shaking minutely and that despite the serious expression on her face, she was sweating. If she was given the choice, she wasn't sure she would trust Suna.

Konoha had let them betray them once and Sakura wasn't sure they had changed enough to merit the trust they put on them. But she knew that right now Konoha's support was of extreme importance to Suna, she couldn't see why they would betray her.

Sakura decided that until she got the full scope of the situation, she would treat Temari cautiously but wouldn't attack her. She nodded to the blonde.

"These are your nin and your country," Sakura pointed behind them with her kunai, "what is Suna's protocol for missing nin?"

She knew, of course, had read about it during the Academy, but she still wanted Temari's confirmation.

"Kill on sight."

Without another word to the girl, she turned and entered the clearing they had created with their combined forces. She went to the squirming man first, saw that he had an exposed fracture on his thigh, saw that he was bleeding severely from a head wound and how the front of his shirt was all but melted into his torso.

Sakura stood next to him, grip tightening around the handle of her kunai.

I have to do this, she thought, steeling herself for the task ahead of her. If she stopped thinking about the shinobi at her feet as a man, maybe her hands would stop shaking. She saw from the corner of her eye that Temari was approaching the impaled ninja.

The same hesitation that plagued Sakura stopped the girl before she took a kunai from her holster but Sakura didn't want to watch her any further.

She closed her eyes, imagining where the missing nin's head was and pulled her arm back. When she opened her eyes again, she barely saw a man on the floor, Inner had put a mask over her eyes and all her brain registered was target.

Sakura flung her arm forwards so fast she doubted someone could have seen it. As the sick sounds of the kunai piercing flesh and bone rung inside her head, the same noise was echoed from Temari's side of the clearing.

Sakura felt her breakfast burning its way back her throat but quickly swallowed it down. Her hands were shaking so she squeezed them into fists until her nails broke the skin of her palms. Inner whispered harshly on the back of her mind for her to keep it together squishing all her thoughts of this is wrong, they were defenseless, I'm a killer, I'm a monster.

The thing she had to do next was way worse.

"How far away is your hideout?" Sakura scared herself with how serious her voice was. The hard edge it had taken wasn't anything she had ever thought she'd be able to achieve.

The man who had been coughing up his lungs was already on his feet, turning to run away but Sakura was faster. With the speed she had gained training with Lee this past month she ran towards him and kicked him in the back with enough force to crack the tree he hit.

"I asked you a question!" She snarled at him. Inner provided her with the mental image of Zabuza and how he had projected anger and danger and how it had paralyzed her with fear. A matching image of Orochimaru and his crazy malign chakra and how he had grinned at them.

When Sakura made eye contact with the man she saw how he froze. His skin lost all its colour and sweat broke all over his face. The sudden bout of satisfaction she felt at accomplishing something made her sick.

The man only whimpered when she took some twine from her pouch and tied his hands together. The pain her tight knot brought him was enough to break him out of his stupor and he immediately locked eyes with Temari who was holstering a bloody kunai a couple of steps back.

"You're a traitor to Suna!" He spat at her. "Kissing Konoha's ass while your own village suffers. I hope the council decides on burning you and that monster brother of yours."

"Suna's in shambles because the council decided to stand with a madman and betray the only ally worth having." Temari's face contorted into a disgusted grimace. "It's because of people like you that we lost all those shinobi."

Sakura grabbed the dirty blond hair of the man before them and brought him to his knees roughly before yanking his head back to look at her. She took another kunai from her holster and pressed it to his neck until it drew blood.

"I have five questions." She whispered harshly. "You answer all of them without any fuss and we'll kill you as fast and painless as possible. If you choose to waste our time, I'll make sure your last moments alive are the worst you've ever had."

She didn't know how she could speak so callously about torturing a man to death. All she knew was that Inner kept pushing thoughts to the forefront of her mind about how this man had almost pit Sakura against Temari, about how the mission he had jeopardised could have cost greatly to Konoha, about how this wasn't a man at that moment, he was just enemy.

Inner gave her a mask to put on and hide behind. A mask made of Zabuza and Orochimaru and of the things that gave her nightmares at night. A mask she gladly took.

"Who was the genjutsu user?" Sakura asked.

"Fuck you." The man grinned at her with bloodied teeth when her kunai slid deeper inside his neck.

She didn't nick an artery but the blood was trickling steadily down his throat now. With a harsh exhale Sakura holsted her weapon and looked around her as she thought back to the basic torture class they had at the Academy. Her eyes caught on the splinters from the tree behind the man and she quickly crouched to get one of them.

When she released the man he didn't waste any time before trying to escape but Temari kicked him in his private parts so fast he couldn't do much more than double over.

"You shouldn't make this any harder on yourself." Sakura took his bound hands on hers and motioned for Temari to hold him down. "I'll ask you one more time. Who was the genjutsu user?"

"You're Konoha's bitch," he scoffed at her, "you're the nice village. You won't torture me."

"You're right, we're the nice village." Sakura grabbed his left pinky tightly. "But we're not in Konoha anymore."

It was messy.

At first Sakura didn't really know how to go about it. The first few tries she pierced the tip of his finger with the splinter, then she changed the angle too much and it ended up stuck on the underside of his nail. But after a while she got the hang of it.

He ended up answering all her questions and whenever he paused, Sakura reminded him by twisting the splinter embedded in his pinky finger. Every time nausea came to her and she started shaking, Inner would tell her to push through it, she would remind her that she had promised herself she would do whatever it took for this mission to succeed.

Temari was the one to deliver the killing blow when they were done.

She had managed to get out of him everything she needed. The genjutsu user, the one she figured had to be a jounin, had been the one she killed. Their hideout was about ten kilometres through the forest and they had about four men waiting there. None of them were above chunin level and they were expecting them to arrive after sunset that day.

The reason for the attack was obvious enough for Sakura but he still confirmed it. They wanted to stage a scenario in which it would be hard to determine who had betrayed who, so that Suna and Konoha broke their treaty. They had deserted the village to follow Temari to Konoha and waited outside until she showed up. The jounin of their group had once fought alongside a Hyuuga and knew that, after her order to Hinata, it would be best to stay ahead of them.

"It was necessary." Temari's voice broke her out of her stupor and she realised she'd been staring at her hands for a while, crouched where next to the dead man. "You did right by your country, Sakura."

Sakura sighed, her muscles shaking but an odd emptiness filling her. She got up and looked the girl in the eyes.

"It still doesn't make it right."

Temari continued looking at her, respect, camaraderie and a bit of fear reflecting on her face. They didn't speak for a while, only looked at each other in shared innocence lost. Sakura bizarrely wanted to ask if these had been the first man she'd had to kill.

"There's an outpost about two kilometres down the road, I need to stop there and contact Suna with the location of their bodies and their hiding place."

Sakura nodded at her and turned around, leading the way back to the rest of their team. They didn't speak any further but Temari's presence was somewhat nice to have when the adrenaline rush started to fade.

"Sakura!" Ino yelled and jogged up to them before hugging her tightly. "I was so scared."

Sakura wanted to melt into her best friend's arms, to relax her taut muscles and to let go of the tension in her body but she knew she couldn't do that. If she let go of her masks now she would break down and fall apart and she couldn't allow that right now. So she pushed Ino away as gently as she could and turned to her client.

"I apologize for the trouble, Tachibana-sama." She bowed. "We might need to postpone our arrival to Tetsu."

"Are we in danger?" He asked quietly and Shinsei tightened his hold on his wakizashi.

"Not at the moment. The attack has nothing to do with you specifically, but the missing nin have a hideout into the woods with others who are waiting for us to arrive no later than sundown. I'm confident they will attack again if they realise the entourage they sent to take us to them never arrive." Sakura explained calmly.

"W-What are we going to do?" Ino asked her quietly, her eyes focused on a spot beneath Sakura's jaw.

"We'll go to the furthest village we can get until noon and you and Hinata will guard Tachibana-sama and Shinsei until Temari and I get back." Sakura looked at Ino but she was still fixated on the spot on her neck so she looked at Tachibana instead.

"That's fine."

With a perfunctory nod, Sakura turned around and continued down the road, the others falling into formation behind her.

"S-Sakura-chan," Hinata stuttered from her place on the rear. "Ano, are you sure you don't want me coming with you to the hideout?"

"There are only four men there," Temari answered for her, "and we have the element of surprise."

"You two need to stay and protect our client, Hinata." Sakura's voice came out harsher than she expected so she turned around and smiled at the girl. "Don't worry, Hina-chan, Temari and I make a great team."

They walked in silence after that and reached the Suna outpost in no time. While Temari went inside to send the council a letter, the others stayed by the shade of some trees. Tachibana was sitting on a rickety bench and making in look like a throne while Hinata was with her Byakugan activated and eyes closed. Ino was surreptitiously staring at her while twirling her hands together agitatedly.

Sakura was ignoring her looks and leaning against the wall of the small building when Shinsei approached her. He leaned his shoulder besides her, blocking her from view of the others and reached inside his kimono for a piece of cloth.

"You have blood on you." He gently grabbed her jaw and wet the cloth with his water bottle before stroking it across her heated skin. "That's why Blondie keeps staring at you like going to collapse any second."

"I'm fine." Her voice came out hoarse and Sakura cringed from the tears she could hear behind it. His gentle gestures and soft voice was making it hard for her to keep her masks on and she had to do something before it was too late so she grabbed his wrist firmly and met his eyes. "I said I'm fine."

"Okay," he shrugged and pocketed his handkerchief but didn't step back from her. Instead, he lit a cigarette and took a few drags before offering it to her. It wasn't enough to make her feel like steel again but it did help settling the nervous energy she had cursing through her veins.

The rest of the way was less of a blur for her, she could see things more objectively now instead of pushing everything away with a frantic mantra of don'tfeeldon'tfeel. This was a mission, she did what she had to do, there was still a long way to go before she could break down.

They left her team with the Tachibana in the fanciest place they could find, an onsen by the road with a big daimyo suite. Sakura and Temari immediately took to the trees at top speed with Sakura with her weights back on, making her roughly the same speed as her partner.

They stopped a few kilometres after the spot where they had killed those missing nin and had a short break to eat and drink some water before carrying on. The sun was just beginning to set when they saw the abandoned building the rest of the ninja were squatting at.

It was a two story building with half its roof gone and most of the windows broken. There was a single man on guard outside, lazily using a kunai to get the dirt beneath his fingernails as he leaned against the wall. They waited a few minutes until they could hear three sets of voices from inside and confirm that the man was alone.

Sakura whispered her plan to Temari and put a genjutsu over herself before walking very slowly to the side of the house. From directly in front of Sakura, Temari rustled a bush and Sakura waited with a kunai drawn for the man to go investigate.

He could ignore it or call out and attract his comrades attention. Sakura supposed there were a few variables to this situation but she went with the most likely and created failsafe plans to go with the others.

Thankfully, it wasn't long before the Suna missing nin passed right by her. She quickly jumped up to get a hold of the hair on the back of his head and used her height to her favour when gravity brought her back down and exposed his neck to the kunai she slid across it.

Sakura's muscles strained as she carefully lowered him to the ground and she took a moment to feel nauseous from the feeling of warm blood gushing against her hand before she pushed it away.

Still hidden beneath her genjutsu, she moved back to where Temari was and took aim with three kunai. They went straight through one of the broken window and Sakura immediately activated the exploding tags on them.

"Now!" She yelled the command to Temari who quickly unleashed her wind jutsu on the flames, fuelling them until they burned impossibly hot.

Maybe it wasn't the flashiest and most chakra draining demonstration of power but Sakura had to be real. She was an inexperienced chunin whose fighting style was lacking in several different ways. She didn't know exactly who she would be dealing with, only that they were in bigger numbers than her.

The least chakra she spent, the better. The best thing she could do was end them all with one move and pick off whoever escaped the explosion while they were still disoriented.

There were two screams from inside, one male and one female, before a window broke and a woman threw herself from it. Before she even hit the ground, Temari threw a shuriken at her throat and she was dead.

The two girls waited in silence, their skin heating with the warmth from the fire as the sounds of the man inside increased before dying down.

Without even looking at each other, they both turned around and jumped to the trees. It was barely five minutes before Sakura was heading back towards the ground. She leaned her hands on her knees and promptly threw up everything she had into the bushes. After her stomach was completely empty, she still dry heaved for a while before a cool hand was pressing a wet cloth to her arm.

Sakura used the rag to dry the sweat on her forehead and neck before using it to clean her mouth and discarding it along the bushes.

"I'm sorry." She said hoarsely, still not looking at the older girl.

"Don't be." Temari said simply. After a while of watching Sakura take small sips of her canteen, she added. "You're a good ninja."

Sakura scoffed, tears she knew she wouldn't spill springing to her eyes.

"I'm weak." Her whole body was trembling, even her voice sounded brittle. "Killing is what a ninja is supposed to do and I can't manage it without vomiting."

"These are your first kills, you're taking it remarkably well, to be honest." Temari was grinning ruefully at her when Sakura finally looked at her. "Besides, what a ninja is supposed to do is protect and that's what you did today, Sakura."

Sakura stared at the girl unblinkingly, wondering where she had learned that because it sounded more like something a Konoha ninja would say, not from someone whose country's policy was kill on sight for missing nin.

Her question must have showed on her face because there was a pink tint to the blonde's cheeks as she scratched the back of her head.

"Well, at least that's what that idiot Shikamaru told me." She cleared her throat awkwardly.

"Huh," Sakura said intelligently.

"We are just having a joined Chunin Exam for this semester and the two of us are in charge of making it happen so we end up spending a lot of time together." Temari's eyes were wide as if she couldn't believe she was running her mouth like that.

"I didn't ask." Sakura smiled slyly at her and was rewarded with a blush from the girl.

"Shut up." She scowled at her and punched her in the shoulder when Sakura went past her.

With a slight chuckle and a lighter mood, Sakura took to the trees again with Temari just behind her. They reached the onsen when the moon was already high up in the sky. With a whispered goodnight, they headed to their private rooms to change and catch a few hours of sleep before dawn.

When Sakura was striping, however, she noticed that her right hand was still covered in blood and suddenly she felt too dirty for bed. With a barely suppressed shudder, she hastily took off all her clothes and grabbed a towel before jumping over the walls of the onsen to get to the girls section.

She didn't waste any time in jumping into the scalding water and scrubbing herself vigorously. Her skin was pink and tender but she didn't care because she had to get the blood out. It was a few seconds later that she realised she'd been panting and that the dripping she'd been hearing was the sound of her tears hitting the pool.

"Shit." She couldn't even keep her promise to herself to never cry again. She supposed it had been stupid of her to think she could change so drastically overtime.

Sakura took a few unsteady breaths to calm herself before getting out and wrapping a towel around herself.

"There you are."

Sakura gasped and turned to the entrance she had completely forgone in her haste, her fingers twitching for a holster that wasn't there.

"Shinsei," she breathed. "You scared me."

"I heard you girls coming in but your light was still on." He shrugged. "I got worried when I didn't find you in your room." There was a sheepish undertone to his voice that strangely appealed to Sakura and thinking of it she remembered the other part of her mission.

It was maybe a mix of different things that made Sakura do what she did next. It may have been the conflicting emotions she had all day, the horrible things she had to do or even the unexpected tension that had sneaked under her skin when she was with him. She didn't know why but the next thing she knew Sakura was in his arms, her hands bringing his head down almost like she had done to that man outside the cabin but this time it was to bring his lips to hers in a heated kiss.

That first time she didn't exactly know what to do and this wasn't much better but Sakura knew she had to do something about Shinsei before the mission was officially over.

His lips seared hers and Sakura relished the intensity in which his tongue slid against hers. His large hands encircled her waist completely and brought her closer to him while her own desperately wandered from his neck to shoulder to his chest.

With a sudden movement, Shinsei pushed Sakura against the wooden wall hard enough to make her head smart and for her to come back to her senses a bit. But then his lips were moving down and he-oh, god-he was biting and sucking the sensitive skin of her neck making her gasp from how unexpected it was.

Shinsei took her reaction to mean he could go farther, though, so he glided his hands from her waist to her hips to her bottom to grab behind her thighs and push her up, trapped against the wall and his body.

It was all too much.

She could feel every inch of him including his private parts which were pressing against hers and she wasn't wearing anything beneath her towel and oh god, oh god, she could feel him and it was feeling nice until it wasn't because it was too much, she didn't want this, she didn't want-

"Sorry, Kunoichi-chan." Shinsei froze before carefully set her down and taking a step back. "I pushed more than I should have."

Sakura only stared at him for a moment, panting for breath and eyes wide, before her brain caught up to her.

"N-No!" She reached for him, her hands grasping his kimino tightly. "I didn't mean to freeze like that, Shinsei, I'm sorry!" She couldn't fail this. She had to push forward no matter what.

"Sakura." It was the first time he had called her by her name and he did it so seriously she stopped her frantic babbling and looked at him. "Don't worry, okay? I took things too fast but I'm sure we'll have more time to get to know each other."

"What?" Sakura whispered.

"Heh," Shinsei winked at her. "Just something my aniki said. I figured he wants to keep business with Konoha strong so I'm sure we'll have other opportunities.

"Oh," Sakura's eyes widened comically.

"Goodnight, Kunoichi-chan," he kissed her on the cheek. "See you tomorrow."

And then he was gone, leaving Sakura feeling oddly empty. She had gotten her confirmation that the implicit mission had been a success but she had still failed her personal mission. She was supposed to seduce him but she just couldn't go through with it.

With heavy steps she made her way past her room into Ino's, not at all surprised to see the blonde still up. Without caring about clothes, she slid into bed beside her best friend and cuddled up close to her.

"Did you do it?" Ino's voice was sleepy.

Sakura didn't know what part of the night Ino was asking confirmation about but all she could answer was a quiet, "No," before she fell asleep.

Hiya, guys! I hope you enjoyed this chapter... Let me know what you think? The next chapter will be up soon :)